Lauren Cook

Biography

Broadly, I am interested in marine fish ecophysiology: how the bodily functions of a fish impact its environment, and vice versa. My PhD focused on understanding the role of marine fishes in coastal cycling of carbon: an important currency in all living things, and an important element of carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gasses that modulates Earth's climate. More generally, I'm interested in feedbacks between fishes and their habitat, and how humans can interact with these feedbacks. I employ both laboratory-based approaches and modeling-based approaches in my work, and thoroughly enjoy hands-on work plumbing up an experimental system or working out in the field. I am especially interested in expanding metabolic profiles for adult forage fishes (small, schooling, planktivorous fishes), as there is a dearth of metabolic studies for forage fishes in the literature given that they are challenging - but not impossible! - to keep in the laboratory. These metabolic rates can be applied to a wide suite of ecophysiological studies - e.g., determining fish habitat suitability, growth and survival, nutrient mediation, and so on.